Over the next week, 11 countries will look to claim one of the two remaining spots in the 2027 European Baseball Championship as the Baseball Euros B Pool begins play in Bulgaria and Poland. Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, will play host this week to five national teams, one of which will qualify for next year’s European Baseball Championsip, while Wrocław, Poland, welcomes six more countries, who will contend the second spot. This year, WBSC Europe has reverted to the “B Pool” label that was common through 2019, rather than the “Qualifier” or “Qualification” that had been mostly used since the Baseball Euros were expanded to 16 teams and the B-Pool and C-Pool combined in 2019.
Blagoevgrad Baseball Stadium will host Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. Wrocławska Arena Sportu Baseball Field, meanwhile, is the site of competition for Ireland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. In both B Pools, the top two teams in the pool will advance to the semifinal, and the winner of this game then qualifies for the top tier of the continental chamionship. Hungary was due to compete in the B-Pool—likely in Poland—after relegation from the 2025 European Baseball Championship, but its sport ministry did not offer sufficient funding for the federation to compete.
The two winners will join the 14 teams that qualified from the last Baseball Euros: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Qualification in 2023 consisted of three tournaments, and the finalists for each were Hungary over Slovakia in Belgrade; Lithuania over Poland in Kutno, Poland; Austria over Ireland in Ashbourne, Ireland. Lithuania is the highest-ranked team in the qualifiers at No. 44 in the world and No. 14 (of 27 ranked countries) in Europe. Poland (No. 54), Slovakia (No. 61), and Norway (No. 68) are the next three-highest.
Of the 11 national teams, only Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine have ever played in the “A-Pool.” Lithuania made its debut in 2025, while Slovakia’s only appearance came in 2021. Slovenia appeared in three consecutive Euros between 1995–99, while Ukraine was a regular fixture between 1995 and 2023, appearing in 8 of 14 championships during the period. Most of the remaining were fixtures of the former “C-Pool,” held three times between 2014–18, which included all teams outside the then-12 in the A-Pool and a dozen more in the B-Pool. In late 2019, WBSC Europe rearranged these tiers into 16 in the top level and all remaining teams in the qualifying round, though according to its “Baseball Competitions Regulations 2026,” if there are more than 16 national teams that apply for a European Championships B-Pool at any level, “the WBSCE Baseball technical commission has the right to create a C-Pool competition of the respective European Championship.“
Other nations registered with WBSC Europe not competing in this cycle of the European Championship include: Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg (which has never fielded a national team), Moldova, Portugal, Russia, and Türkiye. Of the inactive nations, only Hungary and Türkiye fielded a team in the 2024 qualifiers, and it has been years since most of the others have entered.
We will have daily recaps of each tournament, along with a breakdown of the leading players at the end of each qualifier, so check back regularly for much more.